A computer aided design (CAD) program (hereinafter, referred to as a “printed board CAD”) used for the purpose of designing printed circuit boards has function to place on parts and wiring on the printed boards, for example. Sometimes, a user may desire to use the function of such a printed board CAD for purposes other than originally intended, such as designing layout of appliances and wiring in data centers or Internet data centers (IDCs), for example. This is expected to reduce the cost and time required to develop a CAD program used for designing layout of appliances in a data centers and the like (hereinafter, referred to as an “infra CAD”).
In order to use a printed board CAD as an infra CAD, command names, label names, message texts that are displayed on the CAD, for example, must be changed. For example, texts, such as “signal name”, “parts pin name”, and “accessory”, used in a printed board CAD can be changed to “connection name”, “IF name”, “attachment”, and the like.
Furthermore, some of functions or particular commands in a function may become unnecessary, for some purpose of a program. For example, an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) editor function or a constraint edit function, that are generally provided in a printed board CAD are not required for an infra CAD. In addition, in an infra CAD, RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) information, FPGA part information, and the like, within a information display function are not required.
Conventionally, in order to build an infra CAD from a printed board CAD, resource files for the project of the infra CAD are created by modifying resource files for certain projects in the printed board CAD program, thereby generating the infra CAD.
FIG. 44 is a diagram illustrating an example of a resource file; FIG. 45 is a diagram illustrating an example of a header file; and FIG. 46 is a diagram illustrating an example of a menu screen.
For example, the view control menu depicted in FIG. 46 has menu items, such as Redraw, Zoom all, Zoom in, Zoom out, Zoom pan, View reset. The view control menu depicted in FIG. 46 is defined in the resource file as illustrated in FIG. 44.
The resource file is a file used for handling various types of resources and is created by a programmer. In the Windows® operating system family, such a resource file is saved under a file name appended with the extension “.rc”, for example.
In development of an interactive program, for example, a program may be constructed from multiple projects, including a core project that is the core of the program, and projects for respective functions, and resources of the application may be managed as a project. In addition, command names and label names on menus and dialog boxes used by each project is defined as resources for that project.
Generally, a programmer may give a self-explanatory resource name for each resource to identify that resource, and distinguishes between resources using their resource names. As used herein, “resources” are data (objects) used by a program, and information (attribute information) on texts, contents on windows, menus embedded into the program. Using such resources, font types, display colors, background colors, and the like, are set, for example.
A header file is a file defining IDs (resource IDs) uniquely assigned to respective resource. In the Windows® operating system family, it is saved under a file name, such as Resource.h, for example. After a program is compiled and a load module is generated, behaviors of the program on a computer are controlled using such resource IDs.
However, the work load for modifying a resource file is comparable for the work load required for developing a separate program, which may increase man-hours and cost required for creation, maintenance, and management of resource files. In order to develop multiple programs for a certain number of purposes, the same number of resource files are also required. Furthermore, when multiple resource files are kept, some of resource files may remain unchanged during modification of the resource files, which may deteriorate the quality of the programs.
Techniques are well known in which graphical interfaces or sounds of program are modified by displaying a specialized setup menu (see Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-347780). However, in addition to modification of how items are shown on a screen, a programmer may desire to modify the functions of a program after the program is installed, such as enabling or disabling some functions of the program. However, since a load module of a program is controlled using resource IDs as described above, a programmer cannot modify functions of programs with self-explanatory resource names that are arbitrary set by the programmer, which is troublesome.